Innovation & Entrepreneurship: News

The High School New Venture Challenge (HSNVC) at CU Boulder and Business Bound at CU Denver connect high school students with their communities and cultivate entrepreneurial mindsets that span beyond basic business finance, fostering young innovators across Colorado.

In November, CU Boulder’s Environmental Data Science Innovation & Inclusion Lab (ESIIL) hosted its first-ever virtual hackathon. Working in teams, 45 participants from around the world used environmental data science and AI to create innovative solutions, such as an app to track water quality by neighborhood.

The board will integrate industry leaders poised to support and help shape the university's future of innovation and entrepreneurship. The initiative aims to align and optimize resources across campus to reach across traditional silos, facilitate collaboration, fuel achievement and build CU Boulder’s reputation.

“Entrepreneurs create value by addressing unmet needs in the marketplace,” says Jeffrey Nytch, professor of composition and director of CU Boulder's Entrepreneurship Center for Music. “In the arts, that means understanding the audience you’re trying to reach and creating works that speak to them in meaningful ways.”

Taught by award winning faculty members at the Leeds School of Business's Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, Erick Mueller and Hunter Albright, this year's program focused on the core elements that create critical resiliency in every successful business venture, regardless of stage.

The 16th annual New Venture Challenge (NVC) finals took place on April 12. This high-energy public event filled Boulder Theater on an unseasonably warm spring evening, where the audience watched five startup ventures compete for a portion of $100K in prize money to help them reach the next step in their success.

Ten startups brought ideas to the stage, including how to live and garden more sustainably, how to deal with the downsides of social media, how to offer practical prosthetics for kids—and sustainable water filters and hydroponic produce for all. Eight teams took home a total of $20K to develop their ideas further.

The internet’s freedom of connectivity and information is plagued by real and mounting challenges. Blake Reid, clinical professor of law specializing in technology policy and telecom and disability law at CU Boulder, offers a deeper look at how possible solutions could alter the web as we know it today.

The hotel industry saw bookings sink and costs rise during lockdowns, while the Great Resignation has made it harder to recoup staff as tourism rebounds. Omni Interlocken in Broomfield engaged teams of first-year students at the Leeds School of Business to bring in fresh perspectives on associate retention.

Vitro3D, a CU Boulder startup pioneering volumetric 3D printing for life sciences, just closed its first investment round of $1.3 million. The hard-won vote of confidence from the investment community will allow the promising new venture to pursue ambitious technical advances while continuing to build critical business capacity.